Chronic lymphocytic leukemia, CLL in short, is a disease of abnormal mature B lymphocyte proliferation with slow progression.
In over a half of CLL cases exist the homozygosity or heterozygosity loss of 13q14, one of the most common chromosome abnormality of CLL, which features the abnormal proliferation and storage of lymphocytes, accompanied by low immune function. CLL is mostly seen with middle-aged or old people, of whom 90% are over 50, and more liable are the males. The onset of CLL is concealed, and the clinical features are various, inert or invasive. The patients can expect a survival time of 1 to over 15 years. And the pathogenesis of CLL is not quite clear yet.
Presently the knowledge on the prognosis of CLL is limited, so that the treatment measures cannot be adopted as that is with acute leukemia, according to the prognosis risk of patients. The expected survival time of patients even with the worst prognosis can be years.
The factors to be considered in treatment include disease progression, clinical symptoms, tumor load, age, complications, adverse prognostic factors and effect of treatment on survival time, and etc. No effective treatment measures against CLL exist but the hemopoietic stem cell transplant. A typical treatment plan of CLL in hospitals mainly adopt chemotherapy, radiotherapy, interferon therapy and marrow transplant, and etc., but no ideal treatment effect can be realized, and the natural process of the disease cannot be altered.
Therefore, it is an urgent need in the field to develop novel methods and drugs for the effective cure of CLL.